The Rockaway Ocean Club will officially open its doors Saturday for the first time in 54 years.
Ursula Damani, a founding partner of Rock Hospitality, which will operate the club, gave a sneak preview of the historic Jacob Riis Bathhouse ahead of the public debut. The facility, located at 157 Rockaway Beach Blvd in Rockaway Park, Queens, sits inside a city-owned building that has undergone an $88 million renovation under a contract with the private development group.
“It’s not luxury. It’s just very approachable, it’s accessible and it’s fun. We just want it to be fun and not fussy,” Damani said in an interview ahead of the opening.
Membership will cost up to $1,700 annually for full access to all amenities, including the restaurant, butterfly garden, and a new pool set to open next weekend. The company emphasized that more than half of the facility will remain free to the public, with various bars, a courtyard for lounging and games, and other spaces open without charge.
“Everybody is welcome. One of the things that makes Jacob Riis Beach so special is the People’s Beach. The beach is the ultimate democratizer. It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you have,” Damani said.
“We are going to remind New Yorkers that New York City is a beach town.”
The project has been nine years in the making, sprouting from what Damani called a “very New York” plan to revive the bathhouse that has sat empty since 1972. The restoration faced repeated construction delays, including setbacks in the final weeks that pushed back an initially planned July launch. Most obstacles centered on the group’s efforts to restore historic aspects of the grounds, or when that proved impossible, to rebuild according to strict landmark regulations requiring new construction to be “remarkably different” from the original.
Those rules produced quirks throughout the club: shiny teal tiles sit next to original aqua ones, and one window overlooking the U-shaped pool has one fewer divided light than its historic counterparts. Rock Hospitality pointed to the still-standing 1932 bronze-turned-green plaque dedicating the shore to the people of New York as its “northern star” in maintaining the bathhouse’s original charm.
“How do we create a space where all people feel welcome and a space that touches all different price points from the boardboard to the members club?” Damani, who partnered with Scott Shnay of SK Development, Aaron Broudo and Belvy Klein of Brooklyn Bazaar for the project, said of their mission.
The club has drawn criticism in recent weeks over its four-figure membership fees and an application form that asks prospective members for social media links. When fully operational, the members-only section will comprise about 40% of the campus. For Saturday’s preview opening, the courtyard will be open to the public, along with food concessionaires, gift shops, and bars.
The sprawling courtyard will host games during the day and concerts at night. Most of the building remains under construction, with owners planning to roll out additional amenities gradually until a grand opening scheduled for spring.
It could be another year before the 28-room hotel on the second floor opens, or the massive rooftop bar offering views of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Manhattan skyline that had been roped off for five decades.
“We didn’t set out to build something new on Riis Beach — we set out to finish something that started in 1932 and got interrupted. This has always been the People’s Beach, built for the people of New York, and restoring this building is how we carry that legacy forward for the next generation,” Shnay said.
The preview season beginning Saturday will run Fridays through Sundays into October, with full operations planned for 2027.